CHAPTER 1

Fatty Bolger sat at the table in The Floating Log in Frogmorton, waiting for Folco to return with their ales. He was already a bit tipsy, something that was happening more often than it should ever since that awful night in Buckland. No. Didn’t do to think about that, or he would go beyond tipsy to downright drunk, and he did not intend to follow that road.

Just then he heard Folco’s voice, high and clear above the din. “And how is Lotho like a carp?”

At the laughter that followed, Fatty sobered as though someone had thrown ice water on him. He rose to go over there as he heard someone say the formula: “I don’t know, how *is* Lotho like a carp?”

“Why, they are both bottom feeders!” laughed Folco, delighted with his own wit. This drew general laughter. Lotho was not well liked, and most hobbits had yet to learn how long his arm had grown in the last few months.

Fatty groaned. This was an old joke of their friends, Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took, often told to bring a smile their cousin Frodo’s face after an encounter with the despicable Lotho Sackville-Baggins.

But it was no longer a joke that was wise to tell in public.

As if “wise” ever entered into anything Folco might say.

Fatty glanced around the room. Perhaps they were lucky and none of the so-called “Chief’s” informants were there.

No. Worse luck. There was Ted Sandyman, his eyes glittering with amused malice as he caught Fredegar’s eyes. Sandyman had it in for Fatty and Folco both, as they had been good friends of Frodo Baggins. There was no chance that this little incident would not be reported to Lotho Pimple.

Well, loathsome Lotho could make things unpleasant, but he was off in Hobbiton at Bag End; perhaps he’d not bother. Still, he was getting his friend out of here as soon as he could, before he put his foot in his mouth again.

Sandyman watched the Bolger and the Boffin as they left. He had a score of his own to settle with them. That Folco had mocked him one night at The Green Dragon in Bywater, and those friends of his--especially Fatty Bolger--had kept the miller from getting his own back. Well, he’d have it back now, and then some. He smiled nastily to himself, as he thought of Lotho’s reaction to being joked about in the inns.

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“That’s right, Chief,” Sandyman said, “he said you was a bottom feeder, like a carp. Everyone there was laughing their fool heads off over it.” He knew just what to say to enrage his employer.

“He did, did he?” asked Lotho thoughtfully.

“Yes sir, he certainly did.” The miller knew that tone. Lotho was planning something dire. Maybe he’d do for that Boffin, like he had for Baggins and his cousins. For Ted Sandyman, like a lot of Lotho’s henchmen, were convinced that the Sackville-Baggins had set some of his Big Folk onto them, and had them done away with. Why else would Big Men on black horses raid that house in Buckland? He didn’t believe the stories that Frodo, Merry and Pippin and that gardener Sam, had gone off into the Old Forest. Why would they? Unless they were running from the Men. Either way they were gone and never coming back.

Lotho pursed his lips thoughtfully. He knew what Sandyman and some of his other people thought. He was amused that they believed he had been that ruthless; sometimes he believed it himself. And why not be?

How dare those hobbits down in Frogmorton be laughing and joking about him in inns anyway? He knew just how to put a stop to it--and to that fool Folco Boffin’s jokes, as well. He still owed Boffin an ill-turn anyway. The fool had nearly cost Lotho his chance to buy Bag End, offering Frodo a loan at the last minute.

If there were no inns, then hobbits could not get together in them to mock him or plot against him. And he’d need to send some of his Big Men to pull them down--all over the Shire. He’d start with the ones in Frogmorton and Budgeford. And if anyone objected, or seemed to object, or that he thought might object, then those Men could deal with them, too.